Burning HD-DVDs @1080i in FCP 5.1.4

[Joseph Hutson]

What I was talking about was, how many minutes of data may be stored if you burn HD material on a regular DVD-R or DVD-RW like the above people talked about.

[Chris Harris]

Like 20 or 30 minutes.

[Hugh Walton]

Originally Posted by Dino Leone

Actually, the scaler in the A20 is reportely one of the best, just following the Toshiba XA2 - that's according to many reports on the AVS forum.

I have the Toshiba HD-A20 and can say from experience that the scaler is by no means "one of the best". I have my A20 connected to my Mitsubishi HD-1000U projector (720p). Believe it or not the projector does a better job with up-conversion than the player. When the A20 up-converts SD DVDs to 720p the result is terrible. For some reason the A20's scaler does a better job up-converting to 1080i, so I have my A20 up-convert to 1080i and then have my Mitsubishi HD-1000U down-convert the signal to its native 720p. The final result is great, but proves that the A20's scaler is flawed when the player is set to 720p output.

Hugh

[Scott Jaco]

This is great info, but I capture everything in AIC so I'm still stuck with a nice long encode back to mpeg-2.

[Johan Forssblad]

Nice news!

Anybody who know what could be done in Europe with PAL system?

Is this possible with 1080i50 or 1080p25 from a Canon XL H1 or similar camera?

[Dino Leone]

Originally Posted by Johan Forssblad

Nice news!

Anybody who know what could be done in Europe with PAL system?

Is this possible with 1080i50 or 1080p25 from a Canon XL H1 or similar camera?

Should work the exact same way as with NTSC. In the project preferences in DVD Studio Pro select PAL, DVD Standard: HD DVD. Then drop your footage in - either 50i or 25p. That's it.

Scott, for me that was the main reason to switch from AIC to HDV codec in final cut - that saves you the transcoding.

Dino

[Johan Forssblad]

Originally Posted by Hugh Walton

...Export your 1080i60 or 1080p30 sequence from Final Cut 5.1.4 as a Quicktime Movie to your hard drive (You can edit 1080p30 footage in a 1080i60 timeline without having to render the sequence).
...Next, "Import" your 1080i60 or 1080p30 Quicktime Movie into the "Assets" window of DVD SP. The Quicktime Movie will usually take a few seconds to load and then a green light appears under the "Status" column.
Hugh

Hi Hugh and Dino, thank you!
Sounds like a great finding but could you please clarify this to me.

I use a Canon XL H1, PAL, in 25F mode.

Do you say I could edit in a 1080i50 timeline instead of 1080p25 timeline? Then it could be imported into DVD SP with 1080i50 setting without having to encode? (DV SP has no 1080p25 setting.)


When I tried a 25F film, edited in a 1080p25 timeline, it took about 4 times longer than the film to import it into DVD SP on a Mac Pro 2.66. It is obviously encoding at the import.

Strangely it thinks the QuickTime film has 24.95 fps. Is this normal?

Thankful for any ideas. /Johan

[Dino Leone]

Originally Posted by Johan Forssblad

Do you say I could edit in a 1080i50 timeline instead of 1080p25 timeline? Then it could be imported into DVD SP with 1080i50 setting without having to encode? (DV SP has no 1080p25 setting.)

Yeah, that should work. You should be able to use either a i50 or p25 footage for DVD StudioPro project set to i50. I did a similar thing: I dumped a 1080p30 sequence from the A1 into a i60 project in DVD StudioPro and it didn't reencode. With respect to editing in FCP, I'm not 100% sure you can use the i50 timeline for p25 footage; I did actually do this in Final Cut Express at the time and it worked (30p in 60i timeline), so it might work in FCP too (I haven't tried that).

Originally Posted by Johan Forssblad

When I tried a 25F film, edited in a 1080p25 timeline, it took about 4 times longer than the film to import it into DVD SP on a Mac Pro 2.66. It is obviously encoding at the import.

Maybe you're using AIC codec?

Originally Posted by Johan Forssblad

Strangely it thinks the QuickTime film has 24.95 fps. Is this normal?

Ehmm... no idea. "It" meaning DVD StudioPro? Maybe that's the reason it's transcoding? Did you check your settings in FCP?

Dino

[Gary Williams]

Has anyone done all this on a dual layer disc yet I currently have a project that is 7.6 gigs and cannot be put on a single layer D-5 at 4.37 gigs. Thanks Gary Williams

[Hugh Walton]

Originally Posted by Gary Williams

Has anyone done all this on a dual layer disc yet I currently have a project that is 7.6 gigs and cannot be put on a single layer D-5 at 4.37 gigs. Thanks Gary Williams

I have not tested this technique on a dual layer disc, but there is no reason it should not work the same way a single layer disc works. Someone else asked the same question, but never reported back. Would it be possible for you to try it and let us know if it works?

If you don't have experience with burning DL discs this may help:

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage...edia_gary.html

Thanks,
Hugh

[Gary Williams]

Originally Posted by Hugh Walton

I have not tested this technique on a dual layer disc, but there is no reason it should not work the same way a single layer disc works. Someone else asked the same question, but never reported back. Would it be possible for you to try it and let us know if it works?

If you don't have experience with burning DL discs this may help:

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage...edia_gary.html

Thanks,
Hugh

Yes sure my project is finished with chapters and everything I will try it in the next couple of days and we will see what happens.

[Gary Williams]

I have been trying to get past the limitation of the DVD-5 30 minute of HD useing the H.264 codet as apple states but have yet to get it to play with out being very chopping in movement. You are suppose to be able to put up to 90 minutes of HD material on an DVD-5 But I have yet to get it to work After I build the finished project and try to play it in my apple dvd player on my system it always plays choppy. If it wont play in that it wont play in an hd player. I would like to see apple make this work. It sounds good but dose not work, I guess the only way will be to burn on a dual layer dvd. I kind of wanted to see if I could get the H.264 codet to work first but no such luck.

[Chris Harris]

Originally Posted by Gary Williams

I have been trying to get past the limitation of the DVD-5 30 minute of HD useing the H.264 codet as apple states but have yet to get it to play with out being very chopping in movement. You are suppose to be able to put up to 90 minutes of HD material on an DVD-5 But I have yet to get it to work After I build the finished project and try to play it in my apple dvd player on my system it always plays choppy. If it wont play in that it wont play in an hd player. I would like to see apple make this work. It sounds good but dose not work, I guess the only way will be to burn on a dual layer dvd. I kind of wanted to see if I could get the H.264 codet to work first but no such luck.

What type of system are you running? Is it possible your system just isn't up to the task? Or maybe the Apple DVD Player just isn't optimized for the H.264 playing. Are you using Tiger or Leopard? They updated the DVD Player in Leopard. I'd go try it in an HD-DVD player. I'll see if I can give it a try this weekend as well, because 90 minutes of HD footage on a DVD5 sounds VERY interesting to me.

[Gary Williams]

Originally Posted by Chris Harris

What type of system are you running? Is it possible your system just isn't up to the task? Or maybe the Apple DVD Player just isn't optimized for the H.264 playing. Are you using Tiger or Leopard? They updated the DVD Player in Leopard. I'd go try it in an HD-DVD player. I'll see if I can give it a try this weekend as well, because 90 minutes of HD footage on a DVD5 sounds VERY interesting to me.

I have the best apple tower they make with 2, 500 gig drives a 250 gig systems drive and 8 gigs of memory with final cut studio pro the latest version. I have the leapord disk but do not want to istall it yet do to the fact I would have to reload all my software.

[Chris Harris]

Originally Posted by Gary Williams

I have the best apple tower they make with 2, 500 gig drives a 250 gig systems drive and 8 gigs of memory with final cut studio pro the latest version. I have the leapord disk but do not want to istall it yet do to the fact I would have to reload all my software.

Hmm, my next guess would be that either the optical drive can't handle it (unlikely), or the Apple DVD Player just isn't optimized for it. I'm going to investigate as soon as I get a chance to do some encoding, probably tomorrow, but this weekend at the latest. Let us know if you figure anything else out!